Charles Fried

Charles Fried is the Beneficial Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he has taught since 1961. He was solicitor general of the United States from 1985 to 1989, and an associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts from 1995 to 1999. His scholarly and teaching interests have been moved by the connection between normative theory and the concrete institutions of public and private law. During his career at Harvard he has taught criminal law, commercial law, Roman law, torts, contracts, labor law, constitutional law, federal courts, and appellate and Supreme Court advocacy. The author of many books and articles, Fried is the author of Anatomy of Values (1970), Right and Wrong (1978), and Modern Liberty (2006), which develop themes in moral and political philosophy with applications to law. Contract as Promise (1980), Making Tort Law (2003, with David Rosenberg), and Saying What the Law Is: The Constitution in the Supreme Court (2004) are fundamental inquiries into broad legal institutions. Order & Law: Arguing the Reagan Revolution (1991) discusses major themes developed in Fried’s time as solicitor general. During his time as a teacher he has also argued a number of major cases in state and federal courts, most notably Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, in which the Supreme Court established the standards for the use of expert and scientific evidence in federal courts.